By R. Jay Gangewere
For nine months the Atlantic puffins are at sea, flying over the Atlantic
Ocean and sparsely inhabited coasts and islands from Labrador to New England,
and from Greenland to Norway and Brittany. Then for three months in the
summer they settle down, nesting on rocky shores where they raise their
young in underground burrows. The long-lived puffin survives for decades,
and is faithful to one mate for many years. Each breeding season they produce
one chick. Over time, colonies develop as the birds return year after year
to a favorite nesting site and burrow in coastal areas where they can feed
their young.
The puffin has special characteristics that humans find easy to enjoya
rolling, slightly comic hop and walk, a beautifully colored and dramatic
head and beak, and a quizzical head-cocking stare when they inspect something
unknown. “People just cant resist puffins,” says Ken Parkes,
curator emeritus of Birds at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, adding,
” They are probably the most photographed bird in existence.”
In 1996 Seddon Bennington, director of Carnegie Science Center, discovered
in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette a small announcement about Project Puffin
and its need for interns and volunteers. Sponsored by the National Audubon
Society as part of its Seabird Restoration Program along the Maine Coast,
Project Puffin seeks to document and encourage the return of the long-absent
puffin to its traditional habitats. By the end of the 19th century the
puffin had been driven by human activity from most of its nesting grounds
along the Maine coast, but by the 1970s the creation of wildlife sanctuaries
in Maine began to encourage the return of different seabird species.
Bennington volunteered, and for three weeks in the summer of 1997 spent
a largely solitary time on Seal Island, 21 miles off the coast of Rockland,
Maine. The task of the volunteers on the island was to observe and document
the hoped-for return of native seabirds on different parts of this island,
which was once the largest Atlantic puffin colony in the Gulf of Maine.
Chicks were banded, making it possible for future volunteers to document
the return of puffinswhich typically might not happen for several years.
The chance to get involved in something entirely different from his
work as a science center director was one reason Bennington volunteered.
But equally important was what he describes as the opportunity for “the
renewal of soul” on the solitude of a wind-swept Atlantic island. As he
wrote later: “The calm murmer of an exhausted sea after a wild night of
crashing waves and wind-driven rain, the spectacular night lightning illuminating
the island from end to end, the rhythm of the tides, the scarlet brushstrokes
of dusk, all restore ones sense of place in a natural world of detail,
drama and beauty.”
Many volunteers in the Seabird Restoration Program along the Maine coast
are graduate students preparing for careers in wildlife management, to
whom living in the wild is part of their professional experience. A good
many volunteers are established professionals in other fields, drawn by
their commitment to environmental restoration, and the chance to experience
life in a natural and lonely frontier of the modern world. In all some
30 volunteers joined the Maine coast staff for Project Puffin from May
until August, 1997. The entire project included six different islands,
and during the period volunteers typically took turns of several weeks
sharing the responsibilities.
This remote grass and granite island offers a habitat that many species
of seabirds love. Its boulder fields and ledges attract puffins, razorbills,
and black guillemots. The grass and ledge areas are favored by terns, the
raspberry and grass thickets appeal to eiders, and the soft peat and glacial
tills are ideal for burrowing by Leachs storm petrels. The rich fishing
grounds offshore attract populations of harbor and gray sealswhich led
to the name of the island.
For 200 years fishermen used Seal Island as a summer campsite while
fishing for herring, groundfish and lobsters. People harvested the seabirds
for meat, and collected eggs and feathers. Seal Island, only 100 acres
and treeless, was a bombing and shelling target from the end of World War
II until 1952. But in 1972 the island became part of a chain of national
wildlife refuges along the coast of Maine. Today it is owned by the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service and is part of the Petit Manan National Wildlife
Refuge. It is managed by the National Audubon Society (NAS).
Once a habitat is disturbed by man, animals do not automatically return.
A typical scenario for returning bird populations along the Maine islands
sees large numbers of gulls crowding out smaller species, such as terns.
In fact predatory gulls can so completely eliminate competition from other
species trying to recolonize an area, that the Audubon Society manages
specific “no gull” zones.
A volunteers duties typically included daily bird counts, three-hour
observation stints behind a “bird-blind” observation structure, and censusing.
Day after day Seddon monitored the puffins returning to a favorite rocky
area. In time he came to identify about 20 individuals. Their courtship
and mating occurred underground, out of sight, and the location of eggs
and chicks had to be verified by constant observation. The puffins fished
with the changing tides, and took turns feeding their young chicks. With
the use of a “spotting scope” an observer can see and record the numbers
on a previously banded adult bird. As a chick nears fledging, the volunteer
goes to the site and gives it an identifying band on its leg.
“Puffins are wonderful to watch,” says Seddon. With so much time for
continuous observation, a bird watcher recognizes the subtle clues and
behavior patterns that differentiate individual birds. They were not only
beautiful, but easy to imagine with comical human traits. “Their walk,
their slightly quizzical look,” he says, “made it impossible not to describe
their behavior in human terms.”
The brightly ornamental beaks of puffins are an attraction during the
mating season. With these beaks and the unusual feature of internal spikes
with which they can hold prey, they have the extraordinary capacity to
catch not one but several fish in a row as they hunt for food beneath the
waters. Puffins return to their nests with several fish at a time to feed
a fast-growing chick. In the fall puffins shed the colorful outer plates
that have grown around their beaks during the mating season, and display
their otherwise smaller bills. They are like deer which shed their antlers
annually, only to grow them again next year.
For Seddon Bennington, Project Puffin was a second experience in monitoring
wild seabirds. Many years before, in 1969, he had banded albatrosses in
the Sub-Antarctic. As a native of new Zealand, he was early fascinated
by the patterns of migrating wildlife. And he has traveled to remote areas
of Indonesia and other parts of the world. Project Puffin was therefore
one more environmental adventure for him to pursue.
But his experience on Seal Island is also a reminder that worthy environmental
causes are often easily found and pursued, if people have an interest in
expressing their personal sense of stewardship of the natural world. For
further information on the Seabird Restoration Program, of if you want
to “Adopt-A Puffin,” write the National Audubon Society, 159 Sapsucker
Woods Road, Ithaca, NY 14850.
R. Jay Gangewere is editor of Carnegie Magazine.
Copyright 1998 Carnegie Magazine All
rights reserved. Email: carnegiemag@carnegiemuseums.org
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